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While lying in bed this morning, my wife and I got to talking about learning disabilities. Mrs. Pistachio threw out the alphabet soup of ADD, ADHD, and whatever the rest of the learning disabilities are, and explained how difficult existing in the current learning environment are for these children. I responded that I am not a fan of telling our kids they have learning disabilities because they learn differently.
My brother was slapped with one of those labels. Back then they weren't drugging our kids yet, but the ADD and ADHD thing was beginning to make its rounds. Doctors suggested giving my brother coffee to calm him down, while another said to give him more play time so he could literally wear himself out. Mom took an even more drastic measure. She pulled him out of public school, and taught him at home. Homeschooling my brother, it turns out, saved his life. While the academics were saying he was not salvageable, and that he was unteachable, my mom not only taught him, but by the time she put him back in school for his final year so that he could enjoy the opportunity to graduate with his friends, he was so far ahead that the public school was nothing more than refresher courses for him.
When cases like my brother appear in the school system, the child is automatically considered to be damaged. The teachers complain that they already have a loaded classroom of children, and that trying to teach a child with a "learning disability" makes doing their job too hard. The parents are too busy trying to make a living to get involved, and the school system's political indoctrination of our children has become such, they don't want the parents in the classroom, anyway.
When I was younger I spent time as a cross-age tutor. As a kid I enjoyed it because it gave me a chance to break up my school day by spending an hour each day working with kids much younger than me, and the teacher appreciated it because it gave her a chance to have help in the classroom. Parents, back then, also used to volunteer a lot in the classroom. In some places that may still happen, but in my neck of the woods the dynamic between teachers, parents, and other students has changed drastically. Parents are too busy, and the school has actually limited the amount of time a parent is allowed to be in the classroom during the school day.
In discussions with today's teachers in the public school system here in California the frustration is that there are too many students, and not enough manpower - and they blame not enough money as being the culprit behind the difficult classroom dynamic they are currently faced with. Meanwhile, California spends the most money on students in the country, but is dead last in education. Therefore, the problem is obviously not that there is not enough money.
The United States of America became a superpower in about a century and a half educating our children in little red schoolhouses with community hired teachers and a basic curriculum. We excelled in education, until the federal government began to get involved through Dewey's progressive ideas beginning in 1899. With the advent of the creation of the Department of Education during the Jimmy Carter administration in the 1970s, education's downward spiral quickened. To try to save the system, the government began pumping money into the system hand over fist, and yet it continued to spiral out of control.
The Founding Fathers of the United States during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 wisely did not give the federal government any authority over education in the U.S. Constitution. The issue is a local issue that was expected to be administered by local authorities and the community. Parents were also heavily involved in the education of their children, as was the church. Noah Webster pushed that the first reader for children should be the Holy Bible, and his spellers became a large part of the basis of the academic system. From that foundation, the education of our children was given a high priority, and it was done with minimal funding.
Now, education has become big business. The text book contracts go out to the companies who make the right bid and have the right influence, and then they make a lot of money shoving into the pages of those learners their own political narrative and agenda. Teachers, through the unions, have lifetime pensions and can't be fired once they reach tenure (so firing bad teachers is pretty much impossible). Cultural Marxism has crept into the system, infiltrating the halls of our schools, and to hide the reality of what is going on, the parents are being separated more and more from their children during the school day. Parents, however, in the current economic system, don't have the luxury of a single-parent wage earner. Nobody can afford to have only one parent earning, and the feminist movement frowns upon it, anyway, slamming anything that might look like it creates roles for the sexes.
And the children suffer.
There are alternatives we can chase to better educate our children. Private schools and homeschooling have done wonders for our children, producing better academic achievements, and bringing the parents more into the classroom. The problem is, only a few families can afford to do such a thing, and States like California are doing all they can through the legislative process to make it harder to school our children in such a way.
In a free market economy, when one wishes to begin one's own business, rather than reinvent the wheel, a new business owner will often study his or her industry, and learn from those who have been successful. Why doesn't the public school system do the same? If the private schools are producing more successful students, shouldn't the public school system simply learn and duplicate what works?
Money and power disallows the public school systems from seeking a reasonable answer. The teachers unions demand money and power that hamstrings the school districts, and the laws in place make it very difficult for a school or group of teachers to do anything other than what the Orwellian masters of the education industry demands. The textbooks are garbage, the curriculum (Common Core is the latest of the failed ideas which is simply a push for a nationalized curriculum) is devastating, and the schools are often literally crumbling from within. The teachers are tired and overworked, and the parents are simply not involved.
Can't we go back to local control over education, and parents volunteering in the classrooms?
The solution is slapping us in the face, but the power structure refuses to recognize that anything other than their system of power and money can possibly exist. It's collectivism versus individualism, and if your child is too much of an individual to fit into their collective, then according to the school system your child has a learning disability, or must be drugged, or both.
I am surprised our children aren't coming out of their school experiencing chanting "all hail the collective".
Then again. . .
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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